Management of Laser-Cut Sheet-Metal Part Using Collaborative Robots

Small-medium enterprises (SME) specialized in laser cutting and sheet metal working area join the Industry 4.0 (I4.0) revolution in order to preserve their competitiveness in the global market. This study aims to integrate new 14.0 enabling technologies into the design and implementation of the laser cutting process for sheet metal parts in order to improve the working conditions of the operators, enhance the product quality, and increase the SME's productivity. The paper proposes a human-robot collaborative workspace for the detaching, removing, and disposing of the metal sheet parts after laser cut.Such activity is typically performed by human operators because it is difficult to automate. Moreover, such activity is always tedious, sometimes dangerous, and often it is ergonomically heavy.The paper presents a new approach using collaborative robots for the management of sheet metal cut parts, specifically for developing the removing and sorting tasks of the cut sheet metal parts from the blank skeleton. The proposed solution integrates both the design tools, specifically the CAD/CAM environment where the sheet metal parts are modeled and the laser cutting process is defined, and the production tools, which are the Cobots automatically programmed to carry out the sheet metal parts removal. The study proposes both a simulated solution and real case applications.